eBay has amazing daily deals


Fani Willis Team Relies on Judge Chutkan to Stop Donald Trump


19 hours ago 14
-->

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office is relying on another Trump case to make its First Amendment arguments in the sweeping RICO case against former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Georgia prosecutors invoked Judge Tanya Chutkan's previous rulings on several occasions during Thursday's hearing in Fulton County, arguing that her findings support their charges against Trump. Chutkan is the judge overseeing the former president's other election interference case in federal court.

"To address the first, I think, elephant in this courtroom is that Judge Chutkan in D.C. has evaluated all of these arguments under Supreme Court precedent already," Assistant District Attorney Donald Wakeford told Judge Scott McAfee.

Thursday's hearing focused on three pretrial motions filed by the defendants in the case, including an argument from Trump's attorneys that the charges against him criminalize his political speech. Willis' office argues that the First Amendment does not protect criminal conduct.

Thursday's court proceeding is the first hearing since McAfee ruled that either Willis or Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade would need to step aside for the case to proceed. Wade resigned hours after the ruling.

During the hearing, Wakeford also argued that while federal courts have been all over the place in terms of addressing the First Amendment in criminal cases, "We know that in this defendant's case in D.C., actually, Judge Chutkan explicitly went forward and made an analysis based on the allegations in the indictment there."

Central to the dispute is another case that Trump's team has heavily relied on, United States v. Alvarez. In the landmark 2012 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act as unconstitutional, finding that Xavier Alvarez, an elected official who falsely identified himself as a retired Marine, could not be prosecuted for his false claims because even lies are protected speech.

Trump attorney Steve Sadow argued on Thursday that Willis' office was similarly trying to prosecute Trump over false statements. But the district attorney's team argued that because of the split decision by the Supreme Court, the Alvarez decision was unclear and that it did not prevent the government from prosecuting criminal conduct.

"Speaking specifically to Alvarez, it is a plurality opinion with several different concurring—several different opinions written by the justices, what they all agreed on though, was that Alvarez doesn't change the law," Wakeford said. "That speech integral to criminal conduct is not protected under the First Amendment. That's not what Alvarez was about."

Fani Willis Judge Chutkan
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on August 14, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. Willis' team relied on Judge Tanya Chutkan's earlier rulings to make its arguments on Thursday. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The assistant district attorney also argued that Trump was not just being charged for lying, "He's being prosecuted for lying to the government, an act that is illegal because it does harm to the government."

"That is what each and every charge in the indictment demonstrates, is that these statements are part of criminal conduct that is larger than just the false statement on its own," Wakeford said.

"The fact that it speaks to political concerns or core political speech—and this is something that the court in D.C. thoroughly addressed—does not change the fact that it can be employed as part of criminal conduct," he added.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Read Entire Article